Date: Thursday, 11 April, 2013
Speaker: Ken Lau, HKU
Title + Abstract:
Students’ Perceptions of Independent Learning and Reflection in a Technical English Course
Ken Lau, Centre for Applied English Studies, The University of Hong Kong
An out-of-class learning component was introduced to a technical English course taken by all first year engineering students (N= 446) in a Hong Kong university with a view to encouraging them to improve their technical communication skills through reflecting on their own performance and making use of independent learning resources. In the field of engineering, reflection and autonomy have been recognized as important elements of advanced learning and professional practice although they are not commonly built into the undergraduate curriculum. It is therefore hoped that through engaging in this learning component outside class time, students can gradually become (more) reflective and autonomous learners and are able to transfer these skills into the learning of other academic subjects and workplace.
In this talk, I will first briefly describe the design of the independent learning component and report the findings about learners’ perceptions of reflection and independent learning based on the data collected using pre- and post-course questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. Then, I will present some preliminary findings from the corpus-assisted Keyword analysis of the students’ independent learning records (853,215 words in total).
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